SPACE age Midland health bosses are looking to NASA to ensure the biggest overhaul of the NHS in its history doesn’t rocket out of control.

Ian Cumming, chief executive of NHS West Midlands, revealed executives were borrowing techniques used when a space shuttle is launched.

It is as the health authority and primary care trusts (PCTs) tackle the mammoth handover of services before being made extinct by 2013.

“We have borrowed from NASA their alert status,” said Mr Cumming. As NASA is launching a space shuttle, all individual employees can act on matters of concern.

“In the most critical period, when a shuttle is going off, anyone – even those sweeping the floor – can stop the shuttle from being launched.

“We are taking on that NASA view and way of working. The NHS should be on heightened alert.”

West Midlands bosses want health workers to be able to raise any dangers and temporarily abort a handover when changes start taking place from next year. The region is leading the way as ‘guinea pigs’ in compiling files to handover to new organisations being created in Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s shake-up.

The handover documents are to be passed over to new Clinical Commissioning Groups and GP Consortia, who will take over management of the NHS.

Health authority workers are currently in charge of 132 statutory duties for monitoring and safeguarding health services and calling hospitals and surgeries to account, but that will all change when power is handed over.

PCTs are being ordered to make a legacy document including levels of concern and where investment is most needed in each suburb.

The health authority is growing concerned that lives could be put at risk if the handover does not go smoothly.

Peter Blythin, director of nursing at NHS West Midlands, warned: “We need to know where people are going to when they leave because accountability will remain.

“Nurses, doctors and managers can still be held to account after the changes.”